2003

I live in Oklahoma City and the Reivers changed my life. Before I attended their show at VZD’s that night I had been listening to music like Depeche Mode and other bands of the ilk but after the first song I was a devoted fan and have loved them since. They’re a great band and I wish other bands today could hear what I heard and keep hearing now. I was really young and used a fake id to get in the bar. I thought live music sucked and would only go to dance clubs but I was chasing a guy that worked at a record store and he was going there so I followed/stalked him to vzd’s and the rest is history. I stopped going to those trendy dance places and started seeing live music and now I actually review cds and interview bands for a living so that night was really a turning point for my entire life and career.
-Anonymous (Oct. 29, 2003)

In fall of 1985 I left olympia,wa to start college in St Louis. 18 yrs old and thought New Wave was the only music around. First week I met my best friend and music lover who took me to Vintage Vinyl, the biggest and best used music shop in town. I had never seen so much music in one place before…didnt know where to start. Then the guy behind the counter put on a new record…I immediately stopped looking around and listened. It was amazing. Like nothing I had heard before. I immediately bought the album and brought it back to the dorm…My friend and I listened to it in full twice that night. I am still listening to it today…Translate Slowly….
-Ben Wilk (June 20, 2003)

I kept a journal for years, so recalling some of these events is very easy. Unfortunately, many of my entries that pertain to Zeitgeist/the Reivers indicate that my friends were going to the show but that I opted out. Bad mistake; now I see that, but back when you’re a teenager you think these fantastic bands are just fated to last forever.

I did go to some shows and loved the band. They had a magical synergy about them. What a sound! And they seemed so approachable as people– just regular guys and gals in this incredible band. After one show at the Texas Union my roommate and I went up to talk to Kim. She was pregnant at the time and was standing alone to the left of the stage. Very friendly and open she was. Now I shudder to think that her kid must be near college age now!

When I graduated I moved to Chapel Hill with a girlfriend. She was in graduate school and I was washing dishes in a local restaurant/bookstore (with a B.A. in English), so when the Reivers came into town for their March 11, 1989 show we were far too poor to go see them. We had to settle with sitting outside in the dark and listening to them from our seats on a stone planter in the courtyard. The night was cold and clammy, and hearing the old familiar sounds of the Reivers brought back lots of good memories of Austin, which we were missing terribly. The word was, at the time, that only in Chapel Hill would the Reivers open for the local heroes the Connells and that in any other place it would be the other way around.
– Clark Thompson (May 28, 2003)

My roommate from high school and I went to the Connells show at Memorial Hall on UNC campus in… it must have been 1989. Pre-renovation. We were in the front row (standing, no assigned seating). We didn’tknow who the opening band was, we were just there for the Connells. But the Reivers totally rocked! We were dancing and having the best time.
We kept yelling “We’re your biggest fans! Give us your beer!” with an exuberance only known to pre-fake ID teenagers. And right as the curtain closed and the lights dimmed, one of the singers tried to give us his
beer, but then the lights came back on and it was too late. Anyway, I immediately went down to Schoolkids Records and bought the tape (yes, cassette, it was the 80s).

Thirteen years later, this is still my favorite tape! I love to listen to it on Friday afternoons as I’m winding down with a cold one (legally bought–ha!).

And the reason I was looking for Reivers stuff online was that last night my toddler son, bless his heart, wanted to see what happens when you pull all the tape out of a cassette. Mama saved it just in time… wind, wind, wind, wind. It still plays, thank god! But I figured I better find a CD before they go out of print.
-Valerie Parham-Thompson (April 5, 2003)